


A Bucolic

by levromethamphetamine



Series: 195 Menelaus/Helen Scenes [1]
Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, The Iliad - Homer
Genre: F/M, I'll keep adding chapters as I think of things to write about with Them, This will probably never be finished to the extent that the title suggests but
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:20:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23364589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levromethamphetamine/pseuds/levromethamphetamine
Summary: Title (of series) taken from a paper about Menelaus and Helen in Attic Vase Painting. Presented in no chronological order, written as the ideas come unbidden into my mind. Love might be real.
Relationships: Helen of Troy/Menelaus (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore)
Series: 195 Menelaus/Helen Scenes [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1680475
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23





	A Bucolic

Helen held her hand up in front of Menelaus’s face, forbidding him from moving any closer.  
He paused mid-step, gently placing his raised foot down, as quietly as he could, cringing still at the inevitable crunch of foliage beneath it.  
She cringed too - of course she’d heard it, as she’d heard whatever had made her stop Menelaus in his tracks. Her ears seemed just a tad sharper than Menelaus’s and so were her eyes, as she aptly demonstrated by slowly bending her upraised hand to a pointed finger, lowering her arm until her point aimed at some nondescript spot between the trees.  
“There” she mouthed. Menelaus didn’t see anything at first, but he followed her emphasis exactly and then he saw it - a young buck, its antlers just visible behind the bark of the thick oak.  
She noticed, too, the slight change in his demeanor when he caught sight of the animal, and wordlessly beckoned him over towards her from her perch atop a rock, slightly in front of him and to his left.  
He obeyed, changed his position, made sure he could see the deer, then, without giving himself time to think and fret and worry, he drew his bow, pulled an arrow smooth and silent from his quiver, draw, knock, loose -  
Helen was off before his arrow ran home, he would later swear, but she had been right to: it hit square, and the antlers delineating its position trembled and collapsed.  
Menelaus followed her and his own arrow’s path, but by the time he reached his kill, Helen had already dispatched it cleanly with her hunting knife, and he felt a rush of gratitude. As per a previous agreement, Menelaus shot and Helen quickly killed whatever they came upon- Helen was just as good a shot as he, but Menelaus’s heart twisted when he looked into the eyes of a felled beast and had to kill the helpless, wounded thing, a burden Helen was more than willing to take on in exchange for continuing their hunting exploits.  
“Nice shot” she said, still crouched by the buck’s side, her skirt tied up in the way of Phoenician girls, her lustrous dark hair in a neat braid, though by this point some strands had escaped and formed a dark halo around her head.  
“Nice catch” Menelaus corrected, rubbing the back of his neck with embarrassment. “I would’ve given up soon enough and we would’ve gone home empty handed again if you hadn’t spied him”  
“The only reason we didn’t catch anything last time was because we got distracted talking again and nothing would come within a hundred feet of us because you were laughing too loud” Helen joked, bouncing to her feet.  
“And besides, I don’t care much if we do. I like spending time with you. Having a friend who isn’t my sister and isn’t angling for my hand in marriage.”  
Menelaus’s face turned red at that - marriage might be beyond him, especially at the moment, but he had been noticing Helen attracting more suitors than usual lately, and their presence sparked a deep irritation in him. He told himself it was all for Helen’s sake, and his anger was all hers, but he could not pretend to ignore the way he felt now when he saw her body clearly in the light, the way her eyes sparkled when she laughed, the way her supple legs revealed by her knotted skirt caught his eye more than they had, more than they should.  
“When I speak”, said Helen, suddenly deadly serious. “Only you actually listen. You have no idea what that means to me, Menelaus.”  
“I think I do” Menelaus said, thinking back on how Agamemnon, well-intentioned and devoted a brother as he was, tended to talk over Menelaus, speak for him. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, merely an irritation at worst. It was more that, until he had met Helen, who drank in every word with her golden eyes wide as if enraptured, who patiently encouraged him to speak his mind, who coaxed suppressed memories and hidden truths out of him, he had not even known there could be another way.  
“Want to help take him back to the palace?” Menelaus asked instead of trying to summon words to express something so sincere and personal and… complicated. She might have thought it was silly anyways.  
“He’s small, we can probably take him ourselves”.  
Helen raised one eyebrow at the sudden change of subject, but evidently decided not to press the issue. “Of course - do you think we’ll need to use your spear on our way back?”  
“No, but I don’t-”  
“Then we won’t have to find a stick and we can share the burden. Here.”  
Helen bent down to their kill again, lashed the front and back hooves together with twine, and Menelaus, feeling stupid that he hadn’t immediately realized what she was thinking when she mentioned it, passed her the butt of his spear which she slid underneath them. Helen always seemed to think two steps ahead of him, and he admired that in her, but it also meant she often caught him flat-footed.  
They each hefted an end of the sturdy rod on their shoulders, the deer carcass swinging between them.  
“That should work,” Helen said with satisfaction. “Just don’t cut yourself on the pointy end back there.”  
Menelaus waved away her joking concern with a laugh and let her lead the way. She was better at that too, though whether it was because she had spent years exploring the Spartan landscape before he had even set foot here or because of some preternatural ability to know where she was, he did not know. Maybe at some point it didn’t matter.  
“Your brothers don’t much like us spending time alone together” Menelaus said, after they’d walked a few minutes in silence.  
“Neither does your brother - and he’ll yell at both of us! At least my brothers only get angry at you.” At that Menelaus smiled a wry smile.  
“Gods, can you believe he’s marrying my sister?” Helen continued, nimbly scampering over large rocks strewn across the rugged forest floor without slowing her pace, almost without thinking, and forcing Menelaus to climb clumsily over them. “Cly says she doesn’t mind, it’s her duty, whatever, but -” Helen sucked at her teeth, clearly deeply irritated. “I don’t want him to be part of my family.”  
Menelaus thought about arguing with Helen on Agamemnon’s merits and flaws, then thought better of it. They’d had that fight before, and Menelaus always gave up, if only because Helen’s intensity and vitriol wore him down - he was not one for fighting when he was not forced to, with spear or with words.  
He tried another tack. “Well, that’s only if him and Tyndareus succeed in taking back Mycenae. I mean, I’ll be there too, spear in hand, but they’re commanding.”  
“You don’t think they will?”  
“I… I don’t know. I - I don’t even know if I want them to.” It would’ve been sacrilege to say such to Agamemnon, but this was something he could tell Helen- and maybe no one else.  
Helen paused then, adjusted the butt of the spear and turned to face him. In her bright gold eyes there was a deep concern.  
“You don’t want to go home?”  
“I don’t know. I don’t know where my home is but I don’t think it’s… there.”  
“But you were born there, right? That’s where your father’s from.” Helen sounded definitive, as if she had solved it, and Menelaus wished it were that easy.  
“I mean… yes but, does that… does that make it my home? Where I have to live now?” Menelaus rubbed the back of his neck again with his free hand, twisted his foot back and forth on a loose stone. “I don’t really want to leave…” you. The word hovered unspoken in the air and he hoped this was one thing Helen couldn’t sense - he himself was wary of it, ominous and heavy with meaning he did not want to unpack, not now.  
Helen must have seen the worry written on his face (he was never very good at hiding it) and set the butt of the spear and their burden on the ground, sat cross-legged on the rock outcropping, and gently patted the stone next to her, beckoning Menelaus to do the same.  
He obeyed.  
“I don’t - I don’t remember Mycenae the way my brother does. Mostly in my nightmares,” he continued. Helen’s eyes widened, clearly remembering those late and lonely hours when Menelaus, drunk on wine or heady with fear from a recent nightmare, had confided in her the grisly details of his family’s history, the crimes he had heard of, seen, been a part of, to some extent.  
“Atreus was my father and everything, but…” his voice trailed off and he looked away, lost in a field of horrors only he could see. Helen knew that distant look of glazed-over terror, and spoke so as to snap him out of it.  
“Well, there’s Thyestes and Aegisthus on the throne right now” she reminded him, confidently as if it were her own house. Of course Helen wouldn’t have forgotten, though Menelaus could count on one hand how many times he’d mentioned his uncle and cousin to her.  
“Thyestes is however old your dad would be. Aegisthus is…”  
“Younger than me” Menelaus finished, filling in the blank. “A few years younger- maybe more.”  
“SO, Thyestes doesn’t have any real powerful sons to help him in the upcoming battle, whenever it’s going to be. My father’s got both my brothers and Agamemnon… who can throw a spear, disregarding what he’s like as a man.”  
Menelaus couldn’t help but laugh at Helen’s reluctant praise of his brother’s abilities. “And I doubt the Mycenaeans have the loyalty to Thyestes the Spartans have to your father” Menelaus added. “I know my father, in his final days, lost the trust of the nobility and the support of the lands and peoples they controlled. I can’t imagine Thyestes doing any better”  
He played with the edge of his tunic as he spoke, running his hands over and over the raised embroidery Helen had done in red and gold. To lose would be devastating. But to win … would be heartbreaking.  
“My father’s people love him” Helen said confidently. “They’ll fight on your behalf if he says so.”  
That failed to rouse Menelaus’s spirits the way Helen’s tone suggested she had wanted it to. He bit his lip, stared into the forest, tried not to cry.  
“And, well…” she tried again. “It’s not like…. It’s not like there can be two kings of Mycenae, can there?”  
At that Menelaus came back to attention. His heart was in his throat, hardly daring to hope for what she seemed to be suggesting.  
“I don’t think so…” Menelaus said carefully, still fidgeting anxiously with his hem, tracing her handiwork with his hands. It was so elaborate and beautiful and delicate and she had made it for him and would he really have to leave, he could not imagine, he had built so much here…  
“He’s the older brother, it’s his throne, and Cly’s too I guess now.” Helen wrinkled her nose at that, but moved past it. “But it doesn’t necessarily belong to you in the same way, right? Even if it is your home.”  
“Yes, and Agamemnon… will have much rebuilding to do” Menelaus said vaguely, and he could only begin to imagine what that would entail. Agamemnon seemed to have understood the scope of the task well before he did, going silent and serious these recent months, spending hours locked in conversation with Tyndareus, his councilors, even his scribes and record-keepers. He would have to build the Mycenaean governing apparatus from the ground up, and that was assuming Thyestes had left even a foundation upon which to build.  
“I don’t know as much as he does about that, running a kingdom and everything. I feel like I’d be more of a nuisance than anything, even if he wants me there….” Menelaus trailed off, rubbing his short beard as he thought. It might just be possible...  
“And who knows if he does!” Helen continued excitedly, interrupting his train of thought, or perhaps building upon it, her eyes shining the way they did when she latched onto some new idea. The mid-day sun lanced down through the spotted canopy and illuminate the threads of hair come loose from her braid and she looked so beautiful in that moment that even in her rough clothing and dust-streaked skin Menelaus would have thought her fully divine.  
“It’ll be his and Cly’s house, and they’ll have a lot to plot and plan and discuss, and he’ll be doing the ruling I guess and she’ll be maintaining the palace itself - you’d just get in their way” she teased with a smile.  
“And he’ll be busy” Menelaus said. “He’ll be a king, he won’t have as much time to be a big brother”  
“Oh, certainly not. Gods know I never saw my father when I was younger- I barely see him now!” Helen joked, but corroborated his claim.  
“And I… I don’t quite know where my place is or where it will be the way Agamemnon does, but I know I still have much to learn. And I think what I need to learn… I could best learn from Tyndareus”  
“Of COURSE!” Helen shouted, grinning from ear to ear. She held up one finger as she outlined their plan. “Listen: You fight with your brother and my brothers and my father and whoever else is mustered up and get your house back. Put your brother on the throne. We stay for the wedding, the coronation, whatever. Then you come back to Sparta with us and you can do more training, stay out of Agamemnon’s way (and we won’t have to interact with him, that’s a plus), and we get to … stay together!”  
It was a brilliant plan, and one Menelaus wouldn’t have thought of, or at least not as fast. Helen was quick on her feet and a fast thinker too, and when Menelaus nodded in rapturous agreement she closed the distance between them in a sudden leap and wrapped him in a tight hug.  
He returned her embrace immediately, breathing in her scent, the softness of her body yielding to his arms, the warmth and comfort of her beating heart against his. It was over too soon, but then she was grinning again, and had both his hands in hers somehow.  
“I don’t know when you’ll have to go home” she added. “But you don’t have to right now - and I don’t think even Agamemnon would make you.”  
She grabbed the butt of the spear, lifting it with effort. “Now come on,” she gasped. “I don’t want the meat to start stinking before we get back.”  
Menelaus was worried, he had to admit, about being apart from Agamemnon for such an extended period of time. His older brother had been there for him, with him, through everything they had endured thus far, had protected him in Mycenae and kept him alive when they fled to Sparta. But perhaps part of maturity, part of manhood, was learning to be apart from him, and building a life of his own. He had barely considered the thought before, but now that the possibility had been revealed to him (by Helen, of course, again, perennial expander of the boundaries of his mind), he could think of little else.  
“Mycenae isn’t my home” Menelaus insisted, grabbing the point end of his spear around the shaft and hoisting their kill onto his shoulders, following Helen’s footsteps the way he had so many times before. Elation made him bold enough to say this for a fact, and to say the next two words without fear. “You are.”


End file.
